Backlink Building Guide

What is a high-quality link?

1. The linking site is trustworthy. The site that links to you should be seen as trustworthy by search engines. A trustworthy site is one that ranks near the top of search results in its field. You can also assess a site’s trustworthiness using PA and DA scores.
2. The link is popular. Other sites also link to the same URL.
3. The link comes from a source that covers the same topics as your site. Ideally the link should come from a site that writes about the same subject matter as yours. For example, a restaurant should aim to get links from sites that publish restaurant reviews.
4. The link is in text form. The highest-quality link is a normal text link, not an image link.
5. The anchor text contains the desired keyword. The anchor text includes the word or phrase you want to rank for. For example, for the anchor text “putkityöt tampere”: <a href=”www.putkipate.fi/putkityot-tampere”>Putkityöt Tampere</a>
6. The link is placed within the article or page content. A link’s quality is higher when it’s embedded in the page content rather than in a header or footer.
7. The linking site doesn’t have thousands of other links. Link directories have almost no impact on search visibility.
8. (The link drives visitors. Some argue that a link should bring traffic)

Rel=nofollow

A site owner can add the rel=nofollow snippet to a link to tell search engines not to follow (or index) it. That code asks the search engine not to follow the link. These links are unlikely to help your site’s search visibility.

Rel=nofollow is commonly used on sites that allow user-generated content. The tag is often used to prevent link spam. Below is a list of link types that typically use rel=nofollow on all their links.

1. Paid ads. Google, Facebook and other paid advertising.
2. Popular discussion forums. Most discussion forums use rel=nofollow, but not all.
3. Comments. It would be great to get links by commenting on articles in major papers, but unfortunately these links are worthless. Still, there are a handful of Finnish news sites that don’t use rel=nofollow in their comment sections.
4. Social media. Almost all social media links include a rel=nofollow attribute. That doesn’t mean you should stop using social channels — social visibility still affects your search visibility.

You can check whether a site’s links have a rel=nofollow tag using a browser extension like MozBar (green = no rel=nofollow, red = has rel=nofollow).

A simple link-building strategy

1. Create high-quality content and make your pages easy to share. The easiest links are the ones that happen naturally. Make content people want to share online.
2. Ask partners to link to your site. One of the simplest ways to get quality links is to ask people you already know.
3. Do you own multiple websites? Link them together. Just make sure the sites cover related topics.
4. Give a client testimonial. Have you ever hired a service? Provide a testimonial for that company and ask them to link to your site. It’s a win–win.
5. Write guest posts for blogs and websites. Ask to contribute a guest post or quote to a blog in your field. Or start an external blog on a site like puheenvuoro.uusisuomi.fi
6. Join discussions. In the previous (rel=nofollow) point I mentioned that some forums and comment sections include code that prevents links from working. Not all sites do this, though. See the list below.
7. Research which sites link to your competitors and whether you can get the same links. There are many tools for this; one of the easier ones is Moz’s Open Site Explorer